We also went hands-on with big Sony exclusives The Order: 1886 and Until Dawn.

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We were reluctant to get excited about Sony's inaugural PlayStation Experience event in Las Vegas last week, mostly because we've been to a few half-baked, not-quite-E3 video game expos before; these tend to either feature games we've already seen or way too many look-don't-touch teasers. But Sony didn't slack off in the slightest, making sure its show's thousands upon thousands of attendees had plenty of brand-new stuff to play.

PSX hosted so much new content, in fact, that we have to split our impressions into two articles. We're starting with the show's bigger-ticket first-party fare, including two of PlayStation 4's biggest games coming in the first half of next year. Tune in later this week for a look at the expo's glut of indie and small-fry stunners.

The Order: 1886: Players’ loss is Twitch's gain

An official image from Sony's site, which we can confirm is how the game looks in real time.

We snapped a few blurrier off-screen images at PSX, as well.

Sam Machkovech

Another off-screen image.

Lots of third-person gunplay once you get past the overlong stealth portion.

The Order: 1886 should soundly end all debate among console fanboys about their favorite systems' specs and processing power. In that limited-yet-crucial regard, the PS4 has won. Twice now, I've lodged my eyeballs almost directly into a 50-inch screen while playing this game and come back with no qualms calling this the current generation's bona fide visual masterpiece. Camera angles, weather effects, and a striking steampunk aesthetic come together quite well, but it's the facial stuff—animations, scars, hair, beards, lips, all of it—that will stun avid gamers, let alone the grandmas and grandpas of the world who barely ever play with such confounded toys.

So what's the catch? Much like Ryse, Xbox One's own visual tour de force, The Order is mostly style over substance. I didn't want to write the game off as a glorified tech demo after one underwhelming gameplay session, but I've tested two levels now, and both have been utter snoozers. Combat comes in the form of overlong, been-there-done-that third-person gunplay, with nothing in the way of interesting maneuvers or wild weaponry; worse, the realistic-looking combatants didn't have the brains to match.

When I wasn't firing bullets into rebel scum, I was taking way too long to get through tight corridors, punctuated by the occasional slow-walking guard who I had to sneak around. This exposed the game's ho-hum stealth system, marred by a particular hitch in ducking beneath or clinging to anything I might hide behind—let alone having either a radar system or consistent visual or aural cues to indicate that I might be spotted. One small chunk of the PSX demo level took me a solid ten minutes to pass due exclusively to controller woes.

There's a plot about protecting your particular military bosses against some sort of uprising in an alternate-history steampunk version of England, and gameplay is frequently interrupted with dialogue with your fellow comrades about how the mission should really proceed. None of the characters thus far stood out as compelling—there are certainly no Nathan Drakes or similarly arresting characters. Right now, I'm hoping against hope that there will be a cinematic gem buried in this boring interactive experience. Still, I really, really enjoyed looking at this game while waiting in line, much more than when I actually played it.

Until Dawn: This generation's Night Trap

Hypocrisy alert: Having said all of that about The Order, I have come away from Until Dawn—a gorgeous, barely interactive horror game—feeling absolutely jazzed about its potential in the interactive realm.

Until Dawn debuted at preview events in 2012 as a PlayStation 3 game stuck to the motion-sensitive Move wand and was reannounced earlier this year as a souped-up, Hollywood-caliber horror experience for the PS4. Its original incarnation was still plenty evident in this version, as players must shift and rotate their DualShock 4 controllers while they guide freaked-out teenagers through super-creepy environs (all while a crazed serial killer looks on).

You'll walk around, examine highlighted items, and make snap-judgment decisions on how to evade any terrors that appear, but this isn't much of a Resident Evil experience, meaning no combat or complicated puzzles—at least, none in the two lengthy demos I've played thus far. Yet I totally bought into it. Until Dawn puts a focus on marrying its plot and acting—both of which are top-notch B-movie stuff, with dark humor that ranks not too far from the likes of Cabin in the Woods—with the right amount of interactivity and jump-worthy scares.

You don't just guide characters down creepy hallways; in a demo at last year's GameStop Expo, I also navigated the tense, romantically tinged friendship between two characters by making dialogue choices between discoveries and scares. On paper, that doesn't sound like anything new, but Supermassive Games has nailed the beat-by-beat moments of how we control and deal with its game's interactive moments. I've yet to endure overlong stretches of silence or ho-hum scenery; instead, the tension was thick enough that I always wanted to be ready to react.

The PSX demo focused on half-naked scary movie cliché Sam (voiced by Nashville's Hayden Panettiere) as she discovered things had gone awry at a dark, mysterious cabin. It was less of a showcase of the game's solid writing chops than the prior demo I'd played, focusing instead on the game's tech, from an insanely detailed face-rendering system to the kind of robust particle and lighting systems that make for a classic horror experience. Really, my only qualm at this point is the lack of anti-aliasing and other optimizations; when looked at right next to The Order, the otherwise impressive Until Dawn falls short visually.

Ultimately, a game like this walks a really delicate tightrope. Should the plot, acting, atmosphere, or jump-scare pacing falter at any point, that's the point where we can throw up our hands and say, "This is a bad video game. Why not just watch a movie?" So far, Until Dawn appears to have answered that question with stellar design and utter care, and we hope the final product keeps this pace up.

Drawn to Death: Laughy Jaffe

Enlarge/ David Jaffe (second from right) and the other developers speak to PSX fans about their first taste of new game Drawn to Death.

Sam Machkovech

My favorite thing about PlayStation Experience was how game maker David Jaffe exploited it. The co-creator of famed series God of War and Twisted Metal arrived with a brand-new, pre-alpha game that was all rough edges and weird ideas, and he begged fans to come try it out and make it better. Screw what the press might have to say! You guys, the fans, are worth any rough or awkward launch! And I'm gonna demand the same amount of booth space as polished triple-A games like The Order because I'm David Jaffe!

Of course, I rushed to Drawn To Death's line to play the game among the masses, and during that time, I put on my snarky-journalist hat and pish-poshed much of what I saw. A third-person deathmatch shooter styled to look like a middle schooler's notebook? And it only works in four-player, free-for-all battle mode? That's all gonna get old pretty fast!

But by the time I got my hands on a controller, I had seen a lot of the game's subtle genius emerge, even in its nascent state, full of placeholder art and unfinished assets. Drawn To Death felt like old-school combat through and through, but I got the sense that Jaffe demanded, and received, a carte blanche chance to make the deathmatch game of his dreams—one that could include any modern gimmick but still otherwise feel like a good ol' session of Doom.

The game's forehead-smackingly obvious tweak comes in the form of its points system, which rewards players for scoring a kill but also subtractw one from their score after every death. This made the game's Doom-like super-high health system a little easier to swallow, giving players reasons to double-jump and bound around the map to conserve their lives as opposed to straight-line blasting and trading of kills. Should players die, they face another question as well: wait to spawn, or come back to life sooner but with less health? Quite the strategy wrinkle from out of nowhere.

The notebook-paper aesthetic also struck me as a wonderful way to focus players' eyes on whatever combat might be happening across the map; what good is a hiding place if you're always a colorful thing standing out from lined, white paper? Though only one map was on display, it offered open streets, flaming cars, and giant buildings to hop around and dash through—or, in one character's case, fly through.

In Twisted Metal style, each character has his or her own specific moves, weapons, and perks, some of which actually give bonuses to certain competitors (so aim them appropriately!). For example, I was pretty stoked about the dodgeball player who could charge his attack by running and get attack bonuses by catching the dodgeball when it bounced back. Some superpowers turned on only at a lower health percentage as well, which kept low-health fighters in the fray to try to squeeze an extra kill in before losing a point when they died. And let's not forget the game's Mario Kart-like random items, either, which include having the fourth wall broken by a giant hand—the notebook scribbler's of course—appearing in the level to help you move and attack far more rapidly.

For the most part, the deathmatch battle I played was all about high jumps, high speed, and perpetual motion. The basic combat was full of little tweaks I loved, from double jumps to wall jumps, high-powered guns, sliding kicks, flamethrowers, and so much more. Jaffe invited players to a makeshift feedback session after each game, but I didn't have much to say. Other than some seemingly buggy stuff like sluggish melee strikes, I came away from this preview not with the usual grain-of-salt, it's-not-ready-yet asterisks, but rather an intense desire to round up a four-player session of my own as soon as possible. According to Jaffe, that will be sometime in 2015.